re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

This is a two-day meeting for the Ramstein Group. Day 1 appears to have mainly been about ammo supplies, air defense, and logistics.

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Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksyi Reznikov at the start of the second day of the Ramstein-meeting in Brussels.

"We will pay more attention to tanks today."

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WSJ:

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The U.K. said Russia has deployed nearly its entire military in Ukraine, increasing pressure along the front line in the east of the country but falling short of a breakthrough.

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“We now estimate 97% of the whole Russian army is in Ukraine,” U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Today” show on Wednesday.

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Russian military-industrial output is also struggling to keep pace with the war, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday. The ministry pointed to a televised meeting last month in which Russian President Vladimir Putin castigated the deputy prime minister responsible for the defense industry for “fooling around.”

“Production is almost certainly falling short of the Russian demands to resource the Ukraine campaign and restore its longer-term defense requirements,” the ministry said.

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Most people assumed that Russia would ramp up defense production. I well remember the Perun ammo video where he speculated that Russia would double its ammo production this year compared to last year.

But the problem is that sanctions have crippled the Russian defense industry's ability to even produce at the old levels. Stuff breaks, and now they can't get the machine tools from the West that they need to make more. Their raw materials and many of the components that they need have to be sourced in more complicated ways. [Edit: I should have also mentioned the inevitable corruption.]

On that topic, there was an article in the British paper The Telegraph saying that NATO is risking losing an ammunition war with Russia, saying that only the US has ramped up ammo production.

I'm not linking the article, because it's wrong. France and Australia recently announced a joint venture to produce additional ammo for Ukraine, and Germany announced yesterday that it's opening a new plant to produce Gepard 30mm ammo (which had previously been produced by Rheinmatall's Swiss subsidiary).

And we can't lose an ammo war with Russia if Russia hasn't been able to increase ammo production, which is what our assistant secretary of defense said last month.

Anyway, more from the article:

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State news agencies, meanwhile, said Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, would hold a meeting on Feb. 22, a day after Mr. Putin is set to deliver a state of the nation address ahead of the first anniversary of the invasion.

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This is a strong piece of evidence, that goes with a number of others now, that Putin is going to use the anniversary of the invasion to announce another big mobilization.

And he's needed to do that for a while. Even if we discount the Ukrainian numbers and assume that Ukraine has only been killing about 500 Russian soldiers per day for the last month or so, that certainly means well over 1000 per day are being lost altogether. We know that crappy Russian medical care of its soldiers means that the KIA:WIA ratio is not what it would be in the West, but we can still assume over 500 WIA per day who cannot be quickly returned to the front. And then there are the other losses: friendly fire (and there's been a lot of that), accidents, and even things like frostbite (one report said that over 30% of the patients at the hospital in occupied Horlivka were Russian soldiers suffering from frostbite).

If we project out another two months to the time of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, that would mean that Russia would have 60,000 fewer troops with which to defend. And since the losses are concentrated among the infantry, that would mean a significant reduction in defensive capability.

So, Putin has to announce another big mobilization, even though that will be very difficult and costly for Russian society.

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And we can't lose an ammo war with Russia if Russia hasn't been able to increase ammo production, which is what our assistant secretary of defense said last month.

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Yeah I’ve been having a hard time reconciling how a NATO coalition can’t out supply Russia alone on the question of ammo. Majority of these countries haven’t been in an active was since WWII with the major exception being us. Unless you guys tell me other nations supplier us with artillery etc for Iraq & Afghanistan as part of the coalition who helped. I know there were small numbers of troops, but don’t recall artillery and equipment. That was a different time in reporting and I was much younger and less attentive, open to being wrong.

Obviously this leads to much reduced production capacity due to lack of demand in those countries, but you’d have to assume some reasonable stockpile as they all lived through the Cold War. Is this not the case outside of us, the UK, and the Eastern European nations who’ve been sending the majority of artillery and equipment?

I understand you need a reserve of your own for your own defense, but we’re talking a major coalition vs largely one nation who can’t produce high levels on their own to replenish their own stock. Maybe this is in part answered by such a drastic gap in Ukrainian stocks and Russian stocks which would for sure be very wide?

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A potential concern in my mind is what happens if Russia is destabilized. We should be very concerned about an aggressive Russia invading their neighbors. But if they border a lot of less than stable countries that might degrade if Russia devolved.

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While a valid concern, loss of control of nuke would be a much MUCH bigger worry of mine if Russia actually went down this path.

I think it's a realistic chance of it happening, but I think a much more likely outcome is just a shift of management with another dictator coming into power, but Russia itself staying stable.

Just checked the Russian exchange rate.

1 USD is at 74.67 RUB.

Just for reference
1/15/2022: 1 USD was 76.24 RUB
1/30/2022: 1 USD was 78.13 RUB
2/15/2022: 1 USD was 76.52 RUB
2/24/2022: 1 USD was 81.32 RUB
3/1/2022: 1 USD was 105.18 RUB
3/15/2022: 1 USD was 121.35 RUB
4/30/2022: 1 USD was 74.00 RUB
6/25/2022: 1 USD was 53.83 RUB

All that to say is the Rubble is back to where it was pre-invasion and will be interesting to see how the next month or so goes for the exchange rate.

ETA: Also the Russian Stock Market (MOEX) is still down roughly 41% from last year

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Yes, will they mobilize and give a rifle and bullet to every other man

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The one with the rifle shoots! The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!

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A potential concern in my mind is what happens if Russia is destabilized.

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Russia as a nation will muddle through. "Destabilization" just means that Russia may undergo the process of selecting a new ruling group, but that has to happen eventually as Putin and his cronies won't live forever.

The big Russian offensive that we've been hearing about is "likely more aspirational than realistic," a senior US military official (likely Gen. Milley) told CNN.

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CNN — As Russia begins a new offensive in eastern Ukraine, the US and its allies are skeptical Moscow has amassed the manpower and resources to make significant gains, US, UK and Ukrainian officials tell CNN.

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Russia has been increasing the number of forces situated on its border and inside Russian-held territory in Ukraine, some of the forces drawn from a partial mobilization ordered in September last year. Despite the increased numbers, Western allies have not seen evidence of sufficient changes to those forces’ ability to carry out combined arms operations needed to take and hold new territory.

“It’s unlikely Russian forces will be particularly better organized and so unlikely they’ll be particularly more successful, though they do seem willing to send more troops into the meat grinder,” a senior British official told CNN.

The US military had assessed it would take as long as until May for the Russian military to regenerate enough power for a sustained offensive, but Russian leaders wanted action sooner. The US now sees it as likely that Russian forces are moving before they are ready due to political pressure from the Kremlin, the senior US military official told CNN.

Though Ukrainian officials have been sounding the alarm about new Russian attacks in the East, there is also skepticism on the Ukrainian side about Russian capabilities as those forces currently stand.

“They amassed enough manpower to take one or two small cities in Donbas, but that’s it,” a senior Ukrainian diplomat told CNN. “Underwhelming, compared to the sense of panic they were trying to build in Ukraine.”

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Russia has upwards of 95% of their military in the Ukraine conflict.

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got a link to this please?

thank you